Time-passed. As it had happened with his predecessor, so did it happen now with Sally. He began by speculating, wildly at first, more carefully later on. He met with sundry reverses, but he also made some very lucky turns indeed, and he was “ahead of the game” by a very fair amount—certainly a sum far greater than any plodding clerk could save in five years, greater than many an industrious mechanic saves in his entire life. From the bucket-shops he went to the Consolidated Exchange. Then he asked Jacobs and the other two-dollar brokers to let him deal in a small way with them, which they did out of personal liking for him, until he had three separate accounts and could “swing a line” of several hundred shares. He became neither more nor less than 10,000 other human beings in Wall Street—moved by the same impulses, actuated by the same feelings, experiencing the same emotions, having the same thoughts and the same views of what they are pleased to call their “business.” At last the blow fell which Sally had so long dreaded—he was “promoted” to a clerkship in Tracy & Middleton’s office. The firm meant to reward him for his devotion to his work, for his brightness and quickness. From $15 a week they raised his salary to $25, which they considered quite generous, especially in view of his youth, and that he had started three years before with $8. He was only twenty now. But Sally, knowing it meant the abandonment of his lucrative perquisites as telephone “boy,” bemoaned his undeserved fate. He took the money he had made to Mr. Tracy and told him an interesting story of a rich aunt and a legacy, and asked him to let him open an account in the office. Tracy congratulated his young clerk, took the $6,500, and thereafter Sally was both an employee and a customer of Tracy & Middleton.